Critic Reviews

All in all Daggerdale was a pretty good game that was definitely worth the fifteen dollars and I consider it better than most games around that much. The menus felt more like they belonged on the console however.

Daggerdale is a throwback to the glory days of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and those kinds of hack and slash rpgs. It's a trip down memory lane but it's not without its fair share of bugs, from the annoying graphical ones to the downright game-breaking skill losing bugs that strip a character of the skills that you have spent hard earned level up points on. Yet with a few friends it is a fun enough romp that could do with a patch or two to iron out the issues.

It would be trite to end this review with things like ‘Daggerfall? Daggerfail, more like’ or ‘Give it a critical miss’. As a fan of both video games and the Dungeons & Dragons franchise I’m too disappointed for glib soundbites. Daggerdale is poorly paced, borderline unfinished and has little respect for a license that’s given us nearly four decades of high adventure. It’s a dull game in every sense of the word and while it’s not offensive, if you have a dungeon-crawling itch to scratch there are far better games to do it with.

It would be trite to end this review with things like ‘Daggerfall? Daggerfail, more like’ or ‘Give it a critical miss’. As a fan of both video games and the Dungeons & Dragons franchise I’m too disappointed for glib soundbites. Daggerdale is poorly paced, borderline unfinished and has little respect for a license that’s given us nearly four decades of high adventure. It’s a dull game in every sense of the word and while it’s not offensive, if you have a dungeon-crawling itch to scratch there are far better games to do it with.

It would be trite to end this review with things like ‘Daggerfall? Daggerfail, more like’ or ‘Give it a critical miss’. As a fan of both video games and the Dungeons & Dragons franchise I’m too disappointed for glib soundbites. Daggerdale is poorly paced, borderline unfinished and has little respect for a license that’s given us nearly four decades of high adventure. It’s a dull game in every sense of the word and while it’s not offensive, if you have a dungeon-crawling itch to scratch there are far better games to do it with.

This would’ve literally been better without voicechat at all, rather than the half-assed Powered by Gamespy. So you’ll play without speaking, letting only the most important things get stunted out. But this is unacceptable. Dungeons and Dragons is a social game, and conversation is inherent to the experience. Take that out, and Bedlam Studios deserved to fold. I can deal with generic fantasy loot grinds – I revel in it. I can deal with average graphics and a quiet game. I can deal with the price tag – it’s actually a fairly lengthy game for $15. But take away the communicative aspect of a game about communicating, and we’re done here. Terrible.

But the online play is oddly littered with loading screens that emerge out of nowhere in the course of battle, seemingly to mask spurts of lag. Several times during an online quest, one or more players in my party suddenly saw a loading screen while the remaining player(s) ran around helplessly, amidst frozen allies and aggressive foes. It's unacceptable for a game to suddenly incapacitate players in battle, but that's not the only noticeable issue that revealed itself in Daggerdale. Elsewhere, enemies appeared motionless onscreen, textures and other details loaded within feet of my character, and I was able to walk through structural elements like pillars. Perhaps those issues can be patched out -- but until that happens, Daggerdale comes across as a careless and sloppily executed venture. Even if such problems are eventually addressed, this rigid and uninspired quest is little more than an adequate adventure, legendary namesake be damned.

There are bad games and then there are terrible games; Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale rests firmly with the latter. It's cheap, it's not fun to play and most important of all, it's broken beyond belief. Sure, a patch can fix it, but it's almost insulting that the developers would release it like this in the first place. Daggerdale is not only a terrible game, but a terrible raping of a license that's sure to piss off long time fans.

If you’re playing by yourself, Torchlight still beats this as the must-have XBLA dungeon crawler. There is more to find here in multiplayer, but various glitches and lag issues will push all but the most die-hard fans away. It’s definitely not the best game that the Dungeons and Dragons name has been used for. It’s an interesting premise, but Bedlam Games has a lot of polish to do to make this a contender in the genre.